This critical biography of Australian novelist Christina Stead, drawing on her private correspondence and conversations with intimate friends, paints a picture of a passionate and intense woman for whom fame came too late in life, and sheds new light on the impulses behind her writing. It describes her tempestuous early years in parochial Sydney, her escape to London, the discovery of love with Bill Blake, Paris in the 1920s and the move to New York. After the war they returned to Europe but moved restlessly from place to place. Then, in 1965, "The Man Who Loved Children" was reissued, turning Stead into an international celebrity.